This past Friday and Saturday (April 7th and 8th) I had the opportunity to attend a conference presented by the NASSPD or the North American Society for the Study of Personality Disorders. As you can imagine, personality disorders, especially borderline personality disorder is a specific interest of mine. While much of the content of the conference focused on BPD, some of it did not, and I also had the chance to learn about other personality disorders.
As a social worker, I must acquire 36 CEU’s or continuing education credits every three years to retain my license. This breaks down to approximately 12 per year and the CEU’s can be obtained in various ways: through attending live conferences, viewing live presentations on the computer or viewing pre-recorded presentations in the same way (there is a limit on the number of CEU’s that can be earned this way). It was a bonus that this two-day conference awarded more CEU’s than I needed for the entire year and that it was a subject that I was immensely interested in.
An added bonus was that the conference was held in the breath-taking space of the fortieth floor of the World Trade Center in New York City. This is one of the photographs I took from the windows. (My apologies; I can't figure out how to rotate it.)

I found myself fascinated by the topics of the presentations. Here is the conference schedule. Presenters came from all over the world and topics varied from the neurobiology of the brain to the efficacy of transference focused psychotherapy (TFP) and dialectic behavioral therapy (DBT).  Many of the presentations included data from research which went over my head. I took two semesters of statistics in graduate school which was in 1999-2000. I did receive an “A,” but that was quite a while ago. One thing that I did take away was that I’m glad I decided not to take the research track in graduate school!
The highlight of the conference was listening to Dr. Otto Kernberg give his talk first thing Saturday morning. The talk was titled “A New View of a System of Psychoanalytic Techniques." For those of you who may not be familiar with Dr. Kernberg, he is most widely known for his work on borderline personality organization and he developed the psychodynamic treatment  for BPD which is transference focused psychotherapy.
 
After he finished his presentation, as I was coming from the restroom, which necessitated crossing where the bank of elevators was located, Dr. Kernberg asked me if I could help him negotiate how to work the elevator buttons. In this building you didn’t simply press up and down — you entered on a numerical keyboard the number of the floor that was your destination. While Dr. Kernberg is a genius, he is in his eighties and this technology was new to all of us, me included. I entered the number one for him and when he thanked me I replied “You’re welcome Dr. Kernberg. It was a pleasure.”
I had the urge to say to Dr. Kernberg at that point, “TFP saved my life,” but I resisted.
Although technically I’m no longer a patient (four-plus months now and doing great!), in settings such as this one I’m finding it difficult to shake the patient identity when I was in therapy for 33 years. Add to that, I’m truly a recovery success story and that made me want to take over the podium multiple times, tell my story and shout “Look at me!”
One of the factors multiple presenters continued to speak about as an indicator of recovery from BPD was having a full-time job and having at least one sustained relationship (either a friendship or romantic) in one’s life. “Hello, here I am,” I wanted to roar and wave my raised hand.

i  had to keep reminding myself that I was attending the conference as a professional (my badge said LCSW) and that is how I wanted the other professionals who were there; they included psychiatrists, psychologists and other social workers to view me and remember me. 
However, I did approach Dr. R. early Friday morning. He was sitting alone reading the newspaper. Dr. R. was the psychiatrist and the unit chief of the unit I was admitted to when I was psychiatrically hospitalized three years ago. I didn’t expect him to remember me; as hundreds if not thousands of patients have been on that floor since I was there. But as I reminded him of some of the more unique details of my stay, he said it was coming back to him. I told him that I just wanted to let him know that I’d been able to get to the point where I’d felt confident enough to terminate therapy with my psychiatrist Dr. Adena (not her real name), that I had a terrific new job and that I was doing extraordinarily well. Dr. R. told me that he was glad to hear that and he thanked me for letting him know.

The conference was an extraordinary experience and I’m glad that I went. It left me with a longing to tell my story of recovery, not only by writing which I’ve been doing, but to a live audience which is something I’m just beginning to pursue. Individuals who have been diagnosed with BPD and their families need to know that recovery is possible. I want them to have the ability to ask questions and for me to be able to answer them.
I need to help fight the stigma and let people know that they are not alone.